Saint Stephen and Virtual Buck Ascend Mount Fifty.

“You can stop now there’s already been a winner….”the drunk shouted at us as he staggered out of the corner bar in Queens at mile 15 of the New York City Marathon. I always thought this would make a suitable epitaph for one of us middle of the pack distance runners. Why run in the race if you don’t even have a faint hope of winning? I suppose it all depends on how one views “winning” I would claim, boldly and without a hint bravado, that Steve and I are winners and the three marathons we ran this Spring were our victories. And we aren’t done yet! Only the first chapter of our Y2K ascent up Mount 50 is written. Last November Steve celebrated his 50^th birthday and his plan to run a 50-mile race in his 50^th year began to take shape. Without hesitation I signed on—after all Saint Stephen is my long distance running partner, there was no question that I too would run a “50” with him. Y2K dawned bright and the Chicago Ultramarathon appeared on the horizon. I thought this would be a great way to get running a “50” out of the way early, so the journey began. January runs on the lakefront working our way quickly past 18 to 20 miles. We ran 25 miles in early February at Morton Arboretum on the nice hills secreted away on the long inner loop. That was the longest either of us had ever done on a training run, and second only to the 12 marathons we’d each done. And it was great! We incorporated a run-walk strategy into our approach and it served us well. By the time March Madness ½ marathon rolled around I had already run over 350 miles for the year and those late hills—the only really challenging hills in any race in Northern Illinois and I flattened them out. Finally the Lakefront ultra 50K was upon us and we had smoked it. I knew I was going to run Prague in May—indeed we organized our European seminar tour around this marathon, but never really planned on doing Lake County just one month, in fact 30 days after the Ultra. One 12 mile run half way between and other than fatigue, I felt great. And then Lake County. What a great experience, running #14 stride for stride with Saint Stephen. Within a week, Karen and I had packed our bags were gallivanting around Europe. One of my first runs post Lake County was in Culemborg, Holland along the dyke. My next runs were around the ancient walled city of Saint Malo in Bretagne, France. I noted how difficult cobblestones were to run on and avoided them as much as I could. After Saint Malo, Karen and I traveled via car all the way across France to Nancy, then by train to Prague via Frankfurt arriving 24 hours before the marathon. During the really difficult middle kilometers of the marathon I visualized Saint Stephen running next to me, that I was hooked up to Cooper and Miranda and we were being pulled effortlessly along. Running the whole race in the same amount of time it took us to run-walk Lake County, and how I felt after each event gave me some real insight into the virtue of mixing in some walking. What a difference it makes during and after the event! But this experiment had too many variables to be definitive—testing the run only approach after having run two earlier marathons makes it difficult to know.

As Steve was facing his 3^rd marathon of the spring, Grandma’s, we had a very interesting conversation. He too was looking forward to having a few months off from marathon training. We talked about which Fall marathon we were going to do, Milwaukee looks like a good choice—when Steve reminded me—he still has to do a 50 MILE race this year—before his birthday in November. The only question that remains is do we do the 50 miler one month before or one month after Milwaukee?